As a child of the Sixties, I watched a lot of Westerns, from 30 minute tv shows like Have Gun, Will Travel to the hour long Bonanza and Gunsmoke. I saw the Hollywood films of Howard Hawks, Robert Aldrich, John Sturges and later, the Italian-based movies of Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood. So as I was watching Hostiles, the new film by Scott Cooper, starring Christian Bale, Rosamund Pike and Wes Studi, I kept thinking that Sturges or Aldrich could have told the same story in 90 minutes instead of 2 hours--and made it move. Because this film is verrrrrry slow and more than a little episodic: Every 30 minutes there's an act of random violence followed by scenes of riders walking their horses through gorgeous Western vistas or setting up then breaking down their campsites. That's the movie. As a woman whose family is wiped out by a group of renegades, Pike does fine work, though oddly the costume department decided to purchase her wardrobe from a fashionable, high end Western wear store. As a hard-bitten cavalry officer on the verge of retirement, Bale mostly grunts, glowers or poses against those same majestic vistas. And Wes Studi, playing a dying but stoic Cheyenne chief, is allowed the occasional cough to remind us he's sick. All in all, despite the scenery and Pike's performance, it's an interminable slog.